THE GAME

The sky is so bleak, it shrieks with falling planes that fall in the cold rain

I look below me and see the chaos, thousands of men charging into the fray

I can only look down for a moment as I must stay alert in the skies

I Skim the horizon and look for my enemy, my eyes catch his

Like a flash of lighting I see his machine guns open fire (simile)

They are a pear of scissors as they cut through my canvas wings (metaphor)

I cannot stray from my duty: Protect the infantry

I push the stick hard down, my nose is pointing to the ground

I hear the sounds of combat the bullets whistling like my former drill sergeant (personification)

I can see the faces of soldiers looking up I come screaming towards them

They cover their heads and duck; I then begin to pull up…

Soon I am pointing straight at the enemy; I close my eyes and squeeze the trigger

The sound of my machine guns bring me back to reality, I open my eyes

I only see the anguish as my bullets shred through dozens of soldiers

However a Fokker is on my tail and I take to the skies once again

To once again play this deadly game the game of war…

Child Labor

Boy do I hate my job, my name is Joshua Harris and I am a child laborer; I work at a coal mine.  When I do sleep I am often thinking of my (former) home. You see it wasn't always like this... My family was grate.... Papa had a job as a miner and Mamma made the best food in the world; we had a nice house with a small garden that I remember playing around in! But what I miss most about my life back home is school, I loved my friends and missus Laker (teacher) I wasn't the brightest but I tried. However all that changed when Pa died. Mamma never did tell us how but whispers in the town say he died in some explosion in the mine.  Shortly after that’s my mom couldn't pay for my schooling and I was removed from my 5th grade class.  Things quickly went from bad to worse...

My mom could no longer afford the hose we were living in and so we moved to New York City. My dad used to tell me that it was a great city where anyone can become anything and everyone was a star! Sure didn't seem like it as my mom and me had to move in a small tenement. It was OK for a while but we were strapped for cash and my mom couldn't make ends meet. She went off and got job as a weaver but still it was tuff. Finally one day I saw my mom starving so I could eat...I then had enough I decided to work, I did the only work I knew mining. I had been with my dad a few times down in the mine before and I thought I would do well. 

So against my mothers wishes each day I walked to the mine, my journey started at approximately 4 in the morning it took me 2 hours to get to the mine. Once I reached there I was a hurrier (someone who pulls the mine carts) all day long I had to push and pull the heavy carts, they were often in excess of 500 pounds! Now I’m not saying I’m weak but you just try pulling one of those things by yourself! Often times while working I would have to wear a harness so that I could pull the weight, it was so humiliating I felt like an animal! They gave us a 30 minute "lunch break" at 5:00 during this time is when I made new friends and occasionally enemies.  The day would finally end at 9:00 at which point I would begin the 2-hour journey home, alone and in the dark.  When I reached home I just had some soup my mom made and then collapsed on the bed into a slumber. The slumber never lasted as long as it should with this process repeating daily! People often ask me why I endure the conditions I do, sometimes I just don’t answer...I mean what would you do? Would you just sit idly by and watch your mother starve? For me my job means keeping my mother alive!

Still I have to admit it’s a pretty lousy place to work...Its always dark and you have to crouch everywhere! Black soot and coal is always covering my face and hands, sometimes it gets down in my throat and makes it hard to breathe. I’m one of the lucky ones...some of my pal's have this thing called asthma which makes it really hard for them to breathe! In addition to the health hazards I face the prospect of death daily, at any moments something could combust and I’d be blown to smithies! Not to mention the fact that the cave could collapse and there would be no need to make funeral arrangements cause I’d never come out of that coffin! Still like I said earlier the dollar I earn each day is worth it if it helps out my mother!

But despite the bleak prospect I've given you, I've actually had it allot better than some of these other blokes... I know a whole bunch of my fiends who cant work anymore because they were maimed or their lungs get so black with soot they just cant breathe anymore! Because of these things though there is talk that the government wont let this happen to kids like me... Apparently they passed the 1833 Althorn factory act which says that because I’m under 13 I cannot work for more than 49 hours a week! Hopefully though the foreman hears of this soon because I am really tired........ and all this for a meager 40 cents a day! I guess I can only hope for better days....


                                                         HERE I AM!

How is Macbeth like Charlie Sheen?

When reading any book of Shakespeare students often think why am reading this? Or rather how does this relate to ANYTHING modern? Well that answer is not easy but I will try and tell you... You see Shakespeare was a clever man when he wrote books he didn’t just write them for audiences in his time period but rather he made sure that all of his characters reflect real HUMAN ideas and react like humans would regardless of the time period! Thus When I read Shakespeare instead of wishing I had anything else in my hands I try and compare them to things that have relevance and so should you...



So Charlie Sheen?

Yes for the sake of this blog the hero in Shakespeare great play Macbeth (Macbeth :) Shall be compared to Carlos Irwin Estévez better known to us as Charlie Sheen! Now before we begin comparing Mr. Sheen to Macbeth lets find out what Macbeth represents/ is... Macbeth is a thane whose ambition to be king leads to his downfall. Despite being promoted by king Duncan Macbeth desires to be king simply because it was prophesied to him by three weird sisters. This drives him to murder the king Duncan and steal the crown! However after killing the crown he is forced to kill more and more people and goes from being a king to a tyrant! All this time he is slowly losing his sanity as the guilt of committing murder consumes him. Now let’s look at Charlie sheen: Charlie sheen was a star in the hit series "Two and a Half Men". However, despite all of this he began to make some poor life choices; the usage and consumption of illegal drugs and other substances and "biting the hands that feed him! As a result of this he was then told he could not attend any ore shootings. He then demanded a "raise" of 50 percent (keep in mind at this time he was the highest paid actor 1.25 million per episode) He was then replaced by another actor. In the end he is perhaps most noted for a series of famed "meltdowns" in which he spewed hate and essentially went mad on camera!



Notice any similarities?

At their core both Charlie sheen and Macbeth are men who despite having "all they could ask for" still desired more as a result of their ambition! They are both men who "bit the hand that fed them" and then proceeded to suffer! They are men who whilst admired by many fell from grace...men with fatal flaws that lead to their eventual "demise"! Well if you didn’t understand my comparison find another book :) but for the rest of you I hope that this helped you see how powerful and meaningful Shakespeare writing is... Then and now! 

MACBETH THEN AND NOW

 

When watching Rupert Goold’s Macbeth starring Sir Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleet Wood I could not help but think of how the play must have been for those living in Shakespeare's time must have felt when watching the production... you see while many of the lines used in the film were true to their original form the scenes were completely redone in order to make the play "connect" to modern audiences in doing so it at times had to draw a great deal of inspiration from other popular movies in our time: saw, paranormal activity etc.. Perhaps however it drew the most of its influence from one of my favorite movies: Downfall. As I watched both the movies I found that while the dialogue and story were completely different the characters appearance was remarkably similar you see the costumes worn by the actors were almost identical! It really! Added to the atmosphere and theme of the movie!

In addition to the very realistic costumes and over all production value to the movie, the biggest selling point for me however was the special "horror" effects that occurred primarily during the scenes with the witches. While the whole movie had an air of dread, the most freighting scene for me however occurred in the first scene: where the witches plunged their hands into the messenger's heart and removed his heart. That scene simply set the tone for the remainder of the movie. At the end of the movie I pondered what the scenes would have to be like for the audience who watched the play during the Shakespeare's lifetime... I can only assume that in order to make the play seem scary they would instead of drawing on special effects (as we do now) Shakespeare's probably drew more from the people fear of the supernatural for instance take the scene in which the witches begin to talk and "revive" the bodies allowing them to speak, the part in which the witches were speaking were not as shocking as their actions: dancing, moving, spasm etc. However I can presume that in Shakespeare's time the words the witches said were probably much more impact-full then they are now to a modern audience. All in all I am very pleased with this production and I believe it is a faithful recreation of the original masterpiece...albeit with a twist so that it can appeal to a wider audience.

 

Andreas Vesalius

I  am the great Andreas Vesalius! I was born on the 31 December 1514, in Brussels. My parents were Anders Van Wesel and Isabel Crabbe. My great-grandfather, Grandfather, and father all worked in the fields of medicine. Thus at a young age my father persuaded me to continue the family tradition and enrolled me in the Brethren of the Common Life a collage for medicine in Brussels (here I could learn Greek and Latin as well).   In 1528 however I enrolled in the University of Leuven, hoping to take art classes.  However once my dad was appointed as the Valet de Chamber in 1532, I decided to pursue a career in medicine at the University of Paris,  where I had moved to in 1533. While studying the theories of Galen a famous Greek physician - at the university I became fascinated and quite frankly obsessed with Anatomy (the branch of science concerned with the bodily structure of humans, animals, and other organisms, especially as revealed by dissection).  I spent many hours sitting in the cemetery of the innocents to examine bones. (Yes indeed i was short on friends to entertain me.) However sadly in 1536 because there was growing dissent between the Holy Roman Empire and France I returned to the university of Leuven. Merely a year later I graduated. After graduation I was offered the chair of Surgery and Anatomy at Padua. I accepted the position and during my time I was also guest lecturer at Boglogna and Pisa. While I was teaching I brought about a major "banging of heads” - you see before I arrived the topics had been taught primarily from reading classic texts, mainly Galen, followed by an animal dissection by a barber-surgeon whose work was directed by the lecturer. They didn’t bother to check to see if what Galen had said was right or not! But I changed all of that, as I believed that hands-on direct observation was considered the only reliable resource. I carried out dissection by myself with my students watching. 

 The "invention" in 1543 is when I really developed a name for myself I published the 7 volumes of De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the fabric of the human body). This was truly some ground breaking work, if I do say so myself...each book was devoted to a specific part of human anatomy. 

Book 1: Skeletal system

Book 2: Muscular system

Book 3: Vascular and circulatory systems

Book 4: Nervous system

Book 5: Abdominal organs

Book 6: Heart

Book 7: Miscellaneous/Brain 

My books were quite accurate and a break for what was said about the human body at the time, such a break that soon some people began to disagree with my work! However I am quite stern and I even went on to directly disapprove Galen by saying that the human lower jaw bone was comprised of only one bone (Galen had beloved it was 2) - we all know who's right now! Soon after my book was published I became an Imperial physician to the court of Emperor Charles V.  When I was leaving Venice they offered me a position at the expanding University in Pisa but I rejected it. When I was at the court I had to deal with other so called "physicians" constantly mocking me about my fantastic work! But nonetheless I slogged on and for the next 11 years of my life, I traveled with the court and treated injuries, conducting postmortems, etc. During this time I also wrote a book on plants called Radicis Chynae - unfortunately some did not take fondly and an inquisition was set up by Charles V. Fortunately I was found not guilty. (Yay Lucky Me!)  However people still did not like me and my works. One of my many "attackers" published an article that claimed that the human body itself had changed since I had studied it! How dare he! After Charles V’s death I continued to work with his son: Philip II, who rewarded me with a pension for life.  In 1564 however I went on a faithful pilgrimage to the holy land. While coming home my ship was rocked night and day by the rolling seas and soon it was wrecked on the island of Zakynthos. I died on the island at the age of 50. However fear not - I continue to live on today! You see my publication Humani Corporis Fabrica has become one of the foundations for the modern study of the human body. Doctors everywhere study my works, and hopefully unlike Galen before me nobody shall disprove me.


SOME WONDERFUL STUDENTS  HAVE EVEN TAKEN THE CARE TO MAKE TIMELINE OF MY AMAZING LIFE:

ANOTHER TIMELINE:

http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-life-of-andreas-vesalius



CITATIONS:

http://dodd.cmcvellore.ac.in/hom/12%20-%20Vaselins.jpg
http://www.comptonhistory.com/images/vesalius04.jpg
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/images/exhibitions/Bodyimages/Vesalius9.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Vesalius

GOD WILL's IT? OR DOES HE?

“GOD WILLS IT” VS “WHO HAS CLAIM”

 You see in the first statement it would lead a man to believe that one must attack all those who oppose them and their should be no remorse nor regret simply because in the speakers mind they are fighting on the side of GOD thus they “have” to win.

The opposing statement is said by Balian, a knight in charge of defending the city of Jerusalem (hero of motion picture) with a much more clear mindset. Balian argues that it is possible for people to live together in peace despite their religious differences. The speaker would agree with me when I say that he is looking for world peace… not world war.

THE MOSQUE: An Islamic shrine in Jerusalem 

THE WALL: A high wall in Jerusalem where Jews pray and lament

THE SEPULCHER: A Christian church within the Old City of Jerusalem.

Despite history showing that humans simply war and fight over who has claim….

I agree with Balian. I think that humans in our natural state really do wish to live in peace and harmony. What place would be more harmonious that Jerusalem? An ancient city in which three major religions all consider holy! Balian argues that everyone has equal claim to the city. This is what I believe as well. In the same way you cannot say one god is more powerful than another you cannot say one sacred place is more holy than another.